Yvonne de Villiers of Luna Guitars

by Tom Watson.

Yvonne de Villiers, founder of Luna Guitars, is not a musician, but, then, neither was Leo Fender. Two other traits shared by de Villiers and Fender are perhaps more important to the art of creating effective musical instruments than musicianship: an impetus to question the status quo and the courage to respond to the answers.

In the late 1940s, Fender wondered why the making of guitars didn't benefit from the Henry Ford production model. His concerns were primarily practical - how can instruments that reflect the needs of working musicians be manufactured in a more cost-efficient manner?

2003 found stained-glass artist Yvonne de Villiers asking herself a different set of questions: What does the guitar, as an object, really mean to those who love them; and, can't a better mousetrap be built for a particular subset of players - women? Villiers' concerns, although practical with respect to the ways in which the needs of female players differ from their male counterparts, were also artistic. Couldn't guitars do more than appeal to ears, eyes and hands? Couldn't they also speak to body, mind and spirit? Villiers' answers sparked the birth of Luna Guitars.

Yvonne de Villiers is a believer in the spiritual nature and healing potential of music and visual art. When her mother, Hilda, a long-time electric bass player, decided to learn the six-string guitar and struggled with barre chords due to the clash between the diminutive size of her hands and the standard large guitar neck width, visual artist de Villiers experienced the lightbulb Luna moment.

Today, Luna is a growing, full-fledged guitar company featuring a diverse lineup of acoustics, electric-acoustics, and solidbody electrics with an equally diverse lineup of artist endorsees, both male and female. Modern Guitars spoke to Yvonne de Villiers about the Luna story in April of 2007.

Tom Watson: Tell me about your mom.

Yvonne de Villiers: My mom was born in Cuba and she had studied piano there but in the ‘40s there weren’t a lot of opportunities for female musicians so she came to the States, got married and had two kids, the whole nine yards. But she never forgot her desire to play. She also adopted a son, so I have two brothers – John and Ray. When both of them took up the guitar, she decided to take up the bass.

Tom: How old were your brothers when they took up the guitar?

Yvonne: Around 13 and 14.

Tom: Mom decided that if they’re going to play guitar, she'll play bass?

Yvonne: Exactly. They practiced for a couple of years, and in ’67, they formed a band called Sage and started playing locally, recreation centers and that kind of thing.

Tom: Sage is your mom and your two brothers.

Yvonne: Yes. And a drummer who’s a friend of my brother’s. She is such an amazing bass player and my brothers are both really good on guitar, so by 1969 they had a solid following all over Florida. They would also do tours out of state, but they gigged mostly in Florida.

Tom: What kind of music were they playing?

Yvonne: Well, I’ll tell you, it was not the Partridge Family! They did original songs, but in terms of cover songs they would do Hendrix, Santana, Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Stones.

Tom: How did your brothers feel about playing in a band with their mother?

Yvonne: You would really have to know my mom to get that, because she is such a bright spirit. First of all, whenever anybody saw her play bass, their jaws would just drop because it’s not like, “Oh, yeah, she plays pretty good for a woman or a girl.” She was just an amazing bass player that garnered everyone’s respect. At that time, when they were doing the club scene – she played six nights a week for years and years and years – she formed so many relationships with the kids at the clubs that looked up to her, not only as a musical mentor but as a surrogate mother. It’s probably safe to say that she saved a few lives along the way because a lot of them were into drugs and they’d come to her with their problems. She walked that fine line making her someone that they would listen to, a parental unit, so to speak.

Tom: You couldn’t have paid me enough to get on stage with my mom when I was a teenager.

Yvonne: I know. Number one, there was no way that you could tell that she was anyone’s mom. She looked like a contemporary. She’s very, very petite. She was a very beautiful woman. And the same tailors that did the outfits for the band did the outfits for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. So, there was no way you could even tell. Nobody knew her age.

Tom: How long was the group together?

Yvonne: 30 years.

Tom: How old was your mom when she stopped gigging, at least on a full-time basis?

Yvonne: On a full-time basis? She was, I’m thinking, probably into her early 70s. Yeah, because she started at 39.

Tom: What about you throughout this? You’re not in the group, what’s your take on mom and your brothers?

Yvonne: While they had a passion for music in their blood, mine has been for art. Different muses, but same degree of passion. I have always wanted to be an artist, in particular, a stained glass artist. And that went way back. When I was 4 years old, my grandmother first took me to a Catholic church. I walked in and I saw the light streaming through those windows and those ruby and cobalt votive candles, and the feeling was … I don’t know what this is, but I want to do this.

Tom: Something spoke to you.

Yvonne: It really, really did. ...on a deep level. So every summer of my high school career, fortunately there was a stained glass studio here in Tampa that did church windows, I would beg the owner to teach me. I said that I would sweep up, I’d do anything, I’d cook for them, just please let me hang out and learn. And every year, Mr. Meyers was his name and he was a real gentleman, would sit me down and explain to me that it was a man’s craft and that I should go do something else.

Tom: Why would he think that’s a man’s craft?

Yvonne: At that time, there were no women in stained glass.

Tom: Is there some physical reason?

Yvonne: Yes, there’s some physicality, especially since he was doing the really large church windows. There are big crates of glass to unload, and there were large sheets, and that was just his mindset because that’s all that he knew. So during the time that my mom was playing in the band, I was going to U.S.F. and got a degree in English literature and art. I was teaching out in L.A. when I first started learning stained glass. And then I came back to Tampa and opened a studio.

Tom: I know there weren’t many female electric bass players, but I’m surprised about the stained glass part. I never thought of gender bias in that area.

Yvonne: Absolutely. And now, it’s so wonderful because you can even take it in high school. If there had been any place available for me to learn when I was young, I would have literally crawled on my knees across broken glass to get there. There just wasn’t.

Tom: How did you transition into doing stained glass professionally?

Yvonne: Out in L.A. there was a lot more opportunity. I started taking classes and was just basically doing a lot on my own. I set up shop when I came back to Tampa and I called Mr. Meyers, the gentleman who had persuaded me that it’s a man’s craft. When he saw that I had learned it elsewhere, or at least the basics, and was still pursuing it, he said, “I should have taken you on as an apprentice from the beginning.” So then he taught me all of the painting and firing techniques for traditional church work, which you couldn’t learn anywhere other than it being passed on in an apprenticeship. When I published a book of my stained glass work I actually dedicated it to him as a Zen Glass Master that was meant to test my art, I guess you would say.

Tom: Is that the book Living With Art Glass?

Yvonne: Correct. It’s dedicated to him, and to my dad.

Tom: Are churches a big source of employment?

Yvonne: Yes....I did church work for a long time. I also produced a lot of residential entryways and that kind of thing, which was pretty much the bread and butter money. But towards the last five years that I was doing glass, I was doing art in public places, which was wonderful. Airport chapels and libraries and hospitals. I really, really enjoyed doing work in healing places, like Ronald McDonald houses, Hospices and those kinds of non-profits.

Tom: Wasn't there a strong interest in stained glass in the late ‘60s?.

Yvonne: Yes, totally. I was living the dream in the ‘60s. I was out in the country on 20 acres with a stained glass studio and an organic garden.

Tom: I guess it was partially related to the hippie movement. I remember people taking it seriously, but they were making smaller pieces, artwork-size pieces. People would hang them from the ceiling or even in the window.

Yvonne: I did a lot of small free form art when I was starting out.

Tom: Stained glass and light, those are sort of the central points, aren't they?

Yvonne: They are.

Tom: Sculpting with light?

Yvonne: That’s exactly what it is because it’s never the same. It really depends on the time of day and things like what kind of shadows the clouds are casting.

Tom: Even though the piece is static, the environment makes it dynamic.

Yvonne: It does. Nothing excites me more than just finishing up a piece and looking through it for the first time.

Tom: What year did you begin your career as a stained glass artist?

Yvonne: I would say probably around 1972 or so.

Tom: How did you go from stained glass to guitar designing?

Yvonne: As you probably know, Dean Guitars is located here in Tampa and Elliott Rubinson, the owner, had known my mom throughout her musical career because he was also a bass player. He was also aware of my career as a designer. He called me one day and asked, “Do you think that you would be able to do some inlay designs for some guitars because I want to come up with some fresh ideas.” This was for Dean.

Tom: Is this the Zen guitar?

Yvonne: Yes. There’s the Zen guitar and I did the Key Largo and the Tucson as well. So I immediately said "Yes!", because the techniques are identical. Basically, you do a hard line drawing, (what they call cartoon in stained glass). After the graphic layout is done, then it’s just a matter of picking colors for each section, cutting the pieces, and placing it all back together again like a puzzle. So inlay is the same process as stained glass in that respect.

Tom: Did you actually work on the neck or the body to do the inlay?

Yvonne: No, not at that point. I just did some inlay designs for Dean and I never thought about doing anything with guitars at that point.

Tom: Would you create the design and give it to them and they would …?

Yvonne: Correct. I would just do the design and then hand it to them and they would send it away to be done. But then, in 2003, the idea for Luna was born. Basically, my mom had started to play guitar in 2003. All along she had played piano and bass and in 2003, she decided to learn the guitar. Her hands are really, really small so she was having a hard time with barre chords. It was like one of those all-at-once moments in which, finally, our two generations and two interests came together because I thought, “It would be so cool to approach Elliot with the idea of doing a line of guitars for women that would make it easier for them to play and level the playing field with slimmer necks and lighter bodies.”

Whenever I envision something, I see the entire thing at once. I also saw the whole idea of unique artwork being brought to the guitar kind of as a new vehicle for art or as a blank canvas. It was exciting, thinking about that. So, I had another design to show Elliot in 2003 that was for Dean and I said, “I’ve been thinking about this. What are your feelings about it?” He understood what I was talking about because he had watched my mom play a Fender Precision or Jazz bass, all those years.

Tom: If she’s petite and has tiny hands, it must have been tough to play the Jazz or Precision bass.

Yvonne: It was tough, and not only on her hands. The question is, can a woman adapt? Definitely. My mom did it. But, should they have to? The answer to that is a resounding “no” because her back now has a severe curvature from hanging that bass on her shoulder six nights a week for all those years. It really affected her body. A woman's architecture just isn’t meant to take it.

Tom: They were playing club gigs, so they’d do four-hour nights or three-hours nights?

Yvonne: Oh, yeah. At one point, I guess when she was in her 60s, she had a special belt fabricated with a knob and then with a slider thing on the bass so she could rest it on her waist so all the weight wouldn’t be hanging on her shoulder. But it was a challenge.

Tom: What did your mom think when you told her about your idea?

Yvonne: She was totally dibs on the first one.

Tom: Tell me more about when you took the idea to Elliot.

Yvonne: Okay. This was in 2003 and the next NAMM show was obviously 2004, so he just said, “See what you can come up with.” I’ve never been anyone to do something lukewarm, so I jumped in with both feet. What I had to sacrifice for it was the stained glass because this has just been so consuming since then that I haven’t had time for glass. But again, fortunately, because of the way that things come to me, and maybe because I’m a visual person, I could see the entire line at once.

So, the name came to me, the whole mythological framework came to me. I could kind of see the concept for Luna as a whole. I think that not coming from a music background was a huge asset as far as thinking outside the box because I didn’t know what wasn’t possible. It was a whole beginner’s mind thing. In the book Beginner’s Mind it says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities and in the expert’s only a few.” So, I had a zillion ideas. I started to ask questions of the manufacturers, like, “Why does a rosette design have to be circular? Can we impinge into the soundhole? Can we do a free-form design on the entire face of the guitar?”

Tom: To whom would you put these questions?

Yvonne: Well, the guitars are manufactured overseas, so there was a lot of emailing back and forth. I did speak with luthiers in the area as far as the ergonomics of the guitar and I talked to a lot of players. I think that talking to players on the front lines is the best way to go with questions like, “What do you think? What are your needs? How do you think your instrument can be improved?”

Tom: Were you developing the idea with Dean Guitars or on your own?

Yvonne: This was completely on my own. And I always remember the quote "with freedom comes great responsibility". I had total freedom, but it was a huge challenge. Luna’s its own separate entity. I’ve been the only full-time employee for a long time. We have someone part-time doing some verbiage, and we have Carla de Santis doing work as artist liaison, but as far as product development, it’s been me. I'm happy to report that we recently hired someone full time as National Sales/Product Manager.

Tom: You weren’t working within the fold of an established guitar company so how did you get contacts? China? South Korea? You had to get in touch with manufacturers.

Yvonne: The gentleman who was the designer for Dean put me in touch with the companies in China. I think that’s where my English lit major came in handy because communications skills are vital. You have to be so succinct in terms of getting your questions across and asking the same question ten different ways to make sure it's understood.

I started asking questions about the inlay. And then the other question was about laser design because that’s kind of new in the industry. I had seen that they had done interesting things around rosettes, but when I looked at the quality of laser etching, it looked like henna to me. I thought, oh my God, it would be so cool to use this technology on the entire front and back of the guitar, and why not the headstock, you know? I also envisioned doing digital artwork on the front and back of the guitars. The manufacturers would say, “Well, we’ll make an experiment.” So our samples were actually called “experiments.”

Tom: You’re not building prototypes here and sending them to China. You’re just corresponding and talking?

Yvonne: Well, all of the visual artwork is done here, and I send it electronically. Then I follow up with a flurry of emails trying to be as specific as I can in terms of what I want to see. Some of the prototypes were built here, like the Andromeda guitar and bass. My husband, Mike, is a fine woodworker, so we actually sculpted it.

Tom: That’s helpful.

Yvonne: It was very, very helpful. And he’s also a guitarist. He’s been a musician all of his life. We did the sculpting for those bodies in his wood shop and sent them overseas. For the more traditional models, we just said, “Can you do this model with these design specifications, but make the depth 4 inches, for example” There was a lot of back and forth developing the Luna neck.

Tom: There must have been a ton of back and forth.

Yvonne: Correct. They would send us a neck and we’d say, “Well, we’re close, but try this.” Then they’d send us another one.

Tom: How did you learn about things like neck profiles and fingerboard radius? How did you deal with the million little things that go into making a guitar?

Yvonne: I would wake up in the middle of the night asking, “What am I doing? What was I thinking?" Obviously, it was a huge help having Dean located here in Tampa because, even though Luna is a separate entity, they had the infrastructure in place. We shared a building. So that was a huge help. And also, they had a designer at Dean that I could go to and say, “Okay, what about this and what about that?” He’s the one that showed me the ropes in terms of here are the suppliers, here are places you can look to get up to speed. And the manufacturers were a huge help in that area as well because that’s what they do.

Tom: You also had to learn the ins and outs of sales and marketing in a very specific industry.

Yvonne: It was huge. A huge learning curve.

Tom: What's driven you to get it this far?

Yvonne: When I put myself into something, it’s 110%.

Tom: You’re persistent.

Yvonne: I would call it tenacious. Some people call it stubborn.

Tom: What you know about guitars today compared to 2003 must be light years away.

Yvonne: Yes, it is. It totally is. And what I hope to know three years from now will be even further.

Tom: When did you first have actual product lines available?

Yvonne: Winter NAMM 2004.

Tom: That fast? I don’t want to be your enemy.

Yvonne: It was actually so down to the wire that the prototypes were flown directly to the NAMM show instead of to Tampa. I didn’t even see them until I got there.

Tom: The January 2004 NAMM show is your trade debut. How did it go?

Yvonne: It went really, really well. You asked me what keeps me going – the reaction when I finally saw players come up and play them and their reaction to them visually as well as their reaction to the ergonomics. Plus all the letters that come in after I go to shows and meet people face to face. It’s very cool.

Tom: Had you been to a NAMM show before the 2004 winter NAMM?

Yvonne: No.

Tom: You had your own booth at your first show?

Yvonne: At that point, there was no time to get our own booth so we had a very, very small section of the Dean booth. They made room for us.

Tom: What models did you display?

Yvonne: Let me think back. I’ve got a catalogue here. We had the Passion Flower inlay, the Luna Moth inlay, the Dragonfly inlay. We had two of the Fantasie Series, (the two fairies.....Midsummer Night’s Dream and Spirit of the Night.) We had the Pandora Series, which were the electrics, and we had a couple of Auroras, the student guitars, the little ones.

Tom: That’s quite a line for the first show. The point of NAMM is for manufacturers to sell to retailers. Did you take orders?

Yvonne: Absolutely. We did well. There were a lot of players coming through. It was so cool. Some of these young women would come in and they were dressed in black leather with tattoos and piercings, and they tended to come in with their hands in their pockets and stand in front of the guitars and I didn’t know what their reaction was going to be. All of a sudden there was invariably the “oooooh” reaction. It was great because I felt the line was not only accepted but empbraced.

Tom: Had you done marketing research prior to the NAMM show?

Yvonne: There was no time for marketing research, so I was going with my instincts. I tend to do that a lot in my life. But it’s not a bad way to go although I know there’s huge value in doing marketing surveys.

Tom: You didn’t think, “There's a demand for this kind of guitar. Let’s build a guitar to satisfy that market.” You were simply inspired to make certain kinds of instruments and that’s basically the story.

Yvonne: Yes.

Tom: Your guitars strike me as androgynous.

Yvonne: They are. That’s the thing. When I first started, the intent was tied into my mom and her difficulties and just making something beautiful that is also user friendly to someone with a small frame – women were who I had in mind. But at the first NAMM show it surprised me that a lot of males were being just as supportive. For the second NAMM show, when I had more time, we added more models. We added our first Henna guitar and the Muse Series and the electric side we added the Athena and Andromeda Series. That's when we truly started getting positive input from both sexes. So I definitely see it as an androgynous line. If it speaks to the heart and if it feels good on the body, then whether you're male or a female doesn't matter.

In my stained glass career I drew a lot of inspiration from nature, and I obviously do with the guitar designs. There are certain symbols that are meaningful, and whether it’s on a conscious level or not, I think they resonate with people. The lotus is something that has connotations to it, the dragonfly is all about transformation, the phoenix, the dragon, they’re all very powerful symbols that have endured throughout history in many cultures.

Tom: There’s a lot of symbolism in the artwork, but I’m wondering, is it a primarily feminine slant? We still refer to nature as Mother Nature. Has there been a unisex shift in that mindset?

Yvonne: From the letters that I get from male players, yes. And, again, at our first show, I was thinking that it was geared more towards females but then I started getting letters. I receive all of the mail and answer it all myself. I remember the first letter I got from a young man. It was so funny! He wrote: “Dude. I saw this dragonfly guitar and I loved it so much but I think that Luna is for females, so now I don’t know what to do.” I wrote him back and said, “Dude, if you love it, buy it.”

Tom: Is there a gender bias in the artwork?

Yvonne: I think there’s feminine energy to it. I’m a female, I’m coming from my space and the original intent was aimed at a female demographic. But at this point in time I would consider most of our guitars gender neutral. In fact 60% of our registrations are to males. I would be so ecstatic with a 50/50 split because that would indicate that gender is no longer an issue.

Tom: If I look at Luna guitars, let’s say next to some Dean models that are very aggressive male-oriented instruments, the Lunas are definitely softer. But if you look at the Lunas as artwork, you can think of the Romantic period and figures such as Lord Byron, so there’s also a masculine element, which together can make for an androgynous package.

Yvonne: It is. The point you brought up is very well taken. I think it lends balance to the industry, and my intent was also to bring balance.

Tom: This is a sophisticated balance for the guitar world. The artwork, for example, that you use on the Fantasie line ...

Yvonne: Those are from the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Tom: And you have one from Waterhouse, Lady of Shalott, inspired by a Tennyson poem.

Yvonne: Yes.

Tom: There’s something to look at, there’s something to play, there’s something to think about.

Yvonne: Yes. That’s the idea. I really wanted there to be layers of meaning. Even the little things tucked away like the designs on the heelcap on the Muse Series. I like for there to be little surprises where a player will turn it over and think, “Oh, yeah. This is cool.” Again, they’re interpretive because that little design on the heelcap is a very ancient Celtic design. It’s called a Triskele. It’s a trinity. It could be the trinity of earth, sea, and sky. It could be the trinity of maiden, mother, crone. It could be mother, father, child. To a Christian, it could be Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Whatever.

Really, everything that I did in my stained glass has dovetailed into this line of guitars. I got to the point where I couldn’t do traditional church work anymore because people had these definite ideas of how things should be. I got a letter once from a church – we had done the entire church full of windows down in South Florida – and it said, “We love the windows, but the face of Christ is a little too Jewish. Could he have blue eyes?” From then on, when I did church work, if there was going to be any representation I wanted it to be transparent. I wanted it to be empty so that the viewer could bring to it what they needed to bring. I’ve tried to do the same thing with the guitars, to have that openness of interpretation.

Tom: There also seems to be a healing vibe going on in much of the artwork.

Yvonne: That’s wonderful. I’m so happy when people get that because that’s a very important thing to me. I’m a great fan of the poet Rumi, and there’s a line from Rumi that I adore that says, “There is something we long for with our whole hearts, a touch of spirit on the body.” When I did the art in public places that were in healing places, it gratified me on a very deep level and I view these guitars as an extension of that. It is art in public places. They’re being played out in public. Also, the guitar itself is such an intimate possession. It’s like a diary. To me, it’s a sacred thing. You hold it close to your body. You sing your own truth or you write your own truth, and you express your uniqueness. Another thing that I’m hoping Luna will do, beyond offering instruments, is to be encouraging to players to let that light shine, to let their own uniqueness through, because that is a healing thing.

Tom: Other themes that emerge are resurrection and affirmation.

Yvonne: Correct. And again, I get so many letters from people that have bought a Phoenix guitar and said, “This guitar is so meaningful to me at this point of my life because of x, y, and z.” And they’ll tell me their stories, which I consider to be such an honor.

Tom: One concern I’d have with your guitars, especially if I had one of the Fantasie models, is how do they hold up? Is the artwork delicate?

Yvonne: They totally hold up. They hold up as well as any other guitar. With the seal coat they have over them the artwork is totally protected. They are not fragile by any means.

Tom: How did you meet Alex Morgan?

Yvonne: That’s a great story. When I thought about the Henna guitar, I bought a bunch of books on henna and I started coming up with some designs. But one of the other thing's I haven't mentioned that’s really important to me about Luna is authenticity. So, the more I thought about it, I thought, I want a henna artist to do this guitar. I actually first called the premiere henna artist in the US – her name is Catherine Cartwright-Jones and she has a beautiful website called the Henna Page. She said, “You know, I would be so interested in doing it, but I’m working on my dissertation at the moment.” Her dissertation was a Ph.D. in henna!! That’s how seriously she takes it. But then she said, “I can recommend someone to you who is a fabulous henna artist and has written a lot of books.” So she put me in touch with Alex in the UK. Again, it was one of those wonderful connections because not only did she do two beautiful pieces of art for us, I’ve so enjoyed getting to know her as a person and thoroughly relish the time we spend collaborating on a design. Fans of Alex's work will be happy to see more surprises in 2008!

Tom: Morgan's also an excellent photographer.

Yvonne: She is. Her website is lovely. Absolutely lovely.

Tom: This is 2007. How are your guitars distributed?

Yvonne: We have close to 200 dealers in the US. We have international distribution in the UK, Italy, Germany, China, Russia, and a few other places. We also have a "buy now" feature on our website. Of course, it’s always ideal if you can hold one in your arms and play it first. We’re broadening our base every week.

Tom: What’s new for 2007? What did you introduce this year?

Yvonne: This year, we introduced the Flora Lotus and the Fauna Dragon, which is a companion to the Phoenix because not only do each of them stand on their own in terms of symbolism, the combination of the dragon and phoenix is a very powerful one. In fact, they symbolize the yin and the yang. We also have the Dragon available in the Andromeda Series, guitar and bass. We introduced a really remarkable 12-string, which, if you go to our website, you can hear Vicki Genfan playing.

Tom: That’s a great clip.

Yvonne: She’s an amazing player, and she had never played any of that on a 12-string before because she couldn’t. But the neck is such on this one that it enabled her to play a good deal of her material on it, which is fabulous. We also introduced the Muse Parlor, and the new Henna Oasis. And for the Athena Series, we introduced the Gazelle, which takes its inspiration from the Art Deco period, kind of a jazzy little guitar.

Tom: What seems to be the most popular model?

Yvonne: In terms of the acoustics, I would say the Phoenix/Dragon, the Henna, the Dragonfly, the Muse series, all of those are good sellers. If you look at the numbers, they're a little bit ahead, but it's pretty much even across the board because I think each model speaks to someone. The wonderful thing is offering different flavors for different tastes.

Tom: Do you still wake up asking yourself, “What was I thinking?”

Yvonne: That was just the whole flurry of getting it started and the first NAMM show. No, that doesn’t happen so often anymore.

Tom: How was this year’s NAMM show.

Yvonne: It was really good. We’ve had our own booth for the last two shows, which also carries the Luna vibe. Definitely non corporate. You walk in and it doesn’t feel like you're at a trade show. You’re not in Kansas anymore.

Tom: Would New Age be a passé phrase to apply to the Luna concept?

Yvonne: Yes. I think that the whole concept for New Age has been so exploited and there have been so many charlatans involved.

Tom: The look of the Lunas adds another level of inspiration to play.

Yvonne: That’s what’s been, again, so gratifying. I get letters from people that say, “I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to learn guitar” or “I used to play guitar way back when but I haven’t played in 20 years, and I saw this guitar and I just had to … it inspired me to pick it up and play.” And that’s what I’m really praying comes across.

Tom: A guitar that's playable, thinkable and feelable, wins a Trifecta.

Yvonne: I had to come up with a little one-line vision statement, and what I came up with was that our mission was designing inspired quality instruments that are physically comfortable, aesthetically engaging, and spiritually nourishing. I hope they engage people on all three levels.

Tom: What does mom think now that she has a Luna guitar in her hands?

Yvonne: It’s so funny, because the very, very first one, the Andromeda Phoenix guitar, got shipped to Germany after the NAMM show.

Tom: For the Musikmesse Show?

Yvonne: Yes. So normally they get sold there, because it’s so expensive to ship them back, and that one was sent with all of these signs taped to it. “This guitar cannot be sold. It has to come back.” Because even though we would be getting some in within the next three months, I wanted her to have that first prototype. It was really special to me for her to have that first one.

Tom: And what was her reaction when she got it?

Yvonne: “Oh, my God. If I only had this way back when.” She loves it. She still gives piano, bass, and guitar lessons in her home. The first Luna is on her wall.

Related Links
Luna Guitars
Alex Morgan

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